9 July 2023 Week #41: Garcia Hernandez Turnover
Dear Family and Friends,
Monday was the typical meeting morning and a day in the office. However, before we went to the office Clyda called her mother and had a great visit. June is doing well. We are so grateful for Clyda’s sisters that take such great care of her. She doesn’t need a lot of care, just someone always present. She is really pretty healthy. It was a fun visit for Clyda. When we first came out on our mission Clyda was worried that she might not see her mother again on Earth. However, as we get further along on this mission, and with this good visit, Clyda is now pretty optimistic that she will see and enjoy her mother some more here on Earth. One of our first things to do when we get home will be to make a trip to Alaska.
We often talk and reflect on the wonderful homes we grew up in with incredible parents and siblings. We must have done something right in the pre-existence to be so blessed to have been sent to our families. As Carol would say, “God is good.”
On Monday evening we had FHE with the seniors. Sister Jepson was in charge of the lesson and asked each of us to tell a brief story of pioneers in our families. How do you do that briefly. Well I’m terrible and apologize to my family for not remembering their names, but I shared about the boys swimming back across the Missouri River to get the oxen that had gone back across. To me that was testimony of young boys’ confidence in their Father in Heaven that would protect them and a mother’s prayer. Clyda shared the story of her Grandma Tillie Duncan, a young widow with seven children and pregnant with number eight when her husband died of a heart attack. Truly a pioneer! What strength and fortitude to raise that family on that beautiful ranch at 8,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies. We listened to some great stories. All of us have them if we will just take the time to look around. And of course, still my favorite part of FHE, a great treat! Sister Welch had made cinnamon rolls, oh, they were good. I had three! I won’t be coming home slender. Still fat and sassy.
Tuesday and Wednesday mornings Clyda and Sister Manatad cut more Kangaroo Tubes. I spent time at the office. Tuesday of course was the 4th of July! We invited the Heaths and Sister Garner over for Taco Tuesday to celebrate. It was a fun evening eating and visiting. We are truly blessed to be able to associate with great people. Clyda treated Sister Manatad to lunch each day and to ice cream at 7-11 after they finished on Wednesday to celebrate. You can get the soft swirl vanilla chocolate cone like at Little America for 30 pesos, 54 cents! A good deal.
On Wednesday we met with Brother Colipapa at the templex at 4:00. After that we walked on down Gorordo to Sr. Pedro’s to pick up a rotisserie chicken for dinner. They were closed, oh the disappointment. Well, on the way home we tried a different place, Chooks to Go. It was even better than the ones we have gotten at Sr. Pedro’s. What a find. A lot closer to our apartment. We always have chicken and some kind of veggies for dinner. Then Clyda uses the rest of the chicken to make a vegetable and chicken stew that last 2-3 meals. It is delicious.
Thursday was another office day completing our financial report, SUCCESSFULLY! Eight entries. We need to celebrate. Two times in a row now without getting red flagged or in big blue letters, NON-COMPLIANT!
We got our Sibunag Fire Station presentation ready for Monday. We are asking for a motorcycle and a chainsaw so they can respond to a lot of people who live on trails in the hills where a truck can’t go. After a storm, there might be limbs in the way, so they want a chainsaw, also. Basically, the Fire Station is the EMS and Search and Rescue for anything off the highway. We are of course providing them with first aid supplies, an aircon, and bunk beds. I thought we were going to present it last week, but we didn’t get all the quotes back from purchasing in time. We have them now. We will see how this goes.
We also had a wonderful 3:00 session at the temple. It is a beautiful temple. We really enjoy our time there. With the outside looking almost like the rendition of the Montpelier Temple and almost the same square footage, it will be fun to see what the Montpelier Temple will look like inside and out.
On Friday we had our 7:30 a.m. WSRC meeting. It went well. That morning we got our DOD for Garcia Hernandez Child Development Centers approved and signed by the legal department. Oh happy day! Later in the day we met with Elder Dumas, the area seventy over the Cebu and Cebu East Missions. He is due to have his coordinating council meetings with all of the stake presidents in those two missions. We visited about finding a stake that would be a pilot program for food storage. In this heat and humidity, it is a different ball game than what we do back home. Do any of you have family or friends in Florida that store food? Would they be willing to share with us the best practices? Family food storage is basically non-existent here. When disaster hits, they are very reliant on receiving help from the government or the church. We need to teach them to be personally prepared with at least enough for a couple of months. One of the main reasons here for home food storage would be to help them buy items at low prices and store them to use when those items are quite expensive. We feel that vacuum packing will be the best way to go. Rice will stay good for a year here in vacuum packs. A lot of Filipinos use sardines in their cooking. At certain times of year you can get them very cheap. However, a big share of the time they are five times as expensive than at the cheap times. So, acquiring quite a bit at the cheap times, drying them, and then vacuum packing them could be a big savings. That is just one example. There are other items they like to use in their cooking that also have the cheap and expensive seasons.
After our visit with Elder Dumas, we walked down to Ayala Mall. It is a little over a mile. When we got to the mall, we sure enjoyed the air conditioning. We were going to celebrate our successful week by going to our first movie in the Philippines, “The Little Mermaid.” Well, like most of my life, too late. It is gone. Oh well, I saved $8.00, four bucks a piece. We got a taxi home.
On Saturday we caught a cab to the port, and a ferry to Tagbilaran, Bohol. Once there, Brother Bill Smalley picked us up at the port. He is a 76-year-old American, a good member of the church, married to a neat Filipino lady. He took us to our Garcia Hernandez Turnover. We picked up a couple of other ladies on the way. We stopped at his home. A beautiful home with a large yard. He has built the home himself. He is very handy with wood as you will see in the pictures, beautiful cabinets, stairs, tables, etc. We had a few minutes to kill, and he lives close to the highway. He fed us some cake and off we went to the turnover. It was a great affair. A lot of dancing, loud music, loud voices on mikes amped up way to high. Very gracious people. All thirty of the Child Center workers were there. All the development toys were set out. They all had their totes for the toys, their commitment to keep the toys safe. It was a good time and a chance to bare testimony of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. It is wonderful to be in a country that believes in Jesus Christ, and you can speak openly of him and teach them things about him that they do not know. Notice in one of the pictures when we are all pointing up. That is a sign that means, “We give the Lord thanks for the blessings we received.” They feel like us helping them is a blessing from the Lord. Pretty cool!
Hustle back to the port to catch the 4:20 ferry back to Cebu. Board the ferry with a group of youth from the U.S. just finishing their sight-seeing. Now they will start on a child nutrition center at another school here in Cebu this week. This is the start of the fourth center to be built by Rise and Rebuild and the youth groups that are coming over to help them. Pretty cool. We got to visit with some of them. The two leaders with this group both served missions here. The young man served in the Bacolod Mission from 2017-2019. The young lady served here in the Cebu Mission from 2019-2020. Two days after she returned home the pandemic hit. She will be here helping for six weeks with young people, then her family is coming, and they will spend two weeks touring this mission that she served in.
We were starved when we got home. Thanks for left over stew in the refrigerator. It was wonderful. A great day at church today, and then after church we took all of the cut-out material for the Kangaroo Tubes down to the church where the stake relief society was having their monthly meeting. We gave them all of the boxes. They said they would have them all sewn up and returned to the meeting on the second Sunday in August. We will pray for their success and a fun turnover at the hospital towards the end of August.
We are grateful for Connor’s faithful service in Chile. We love reading his weekly letters. We loved hearing about Mylie’s great FSY experience this past week. Our Savior loves us and is giving us every opportunity to learn more about him and return to him. It was fun to listen to the testimonies of Tessa and Taffy of the Holy Ghost bearing witness to them that FSY is an inspired program to help our youth Come Unto Christ. Thanks for sharing with us. We also had a great visit with Olivia. She shared with us the great experience she had as a guest speaker at Geneva’s Girls Camp. Thanks for sharing with us Olivia. I’m grateful our children and grandchildren are having these experiences where the Holy Ghost testifies of truth. I’m grateful for Ministering Angels that are helping us. We are so blessed. Our Heavenly Father truly loves us, and we love you!
With love,
Dad and Mom
Grandpa and Grandma
Briant and Clyda
Week #41 7/3-7/9
Monday was the typical meeting morning and a day in the office. However, before we went to the office Clyda called her mother and had a great visit. June is doing well. We are so grateful for Clyda’s sisters that take such great care of her. She doesn’t need a lot of care, just someone always present. She is really pretty healthy. It was a fun visit for Clyda. When we first came out on our mission Clyda was worried that she might not see her mother again on Earth. However, as we get further along on this mission, and with this good visit, Clyda is now pretty optimistic that she will see and enjoy her mother some more here on Earth. One of our first things to do when we get home will be to make a trip to Alaska.
We often talk and reflect on the wonderful homes we grew up in with incredible parents and siblings. We must have done something right in the pre-existence to be so blessed to have been sent to our families. As Carol would say, “God is good.”
On Monday evening we had FHE with the seniors. Sister Jepson was in charge of the lesson and asked each of us to tell a brief story of pioneers in our families. How do you do that briefly. Well I’m terrible and apologize to my family for not remembering their names, but I shared about the boys swimming back across the Missouri River to get the oxen that had gone back across. To me that was testimony of young boys’ confidence in their Father in Heaven that would protect them and a mother’s prayer. Clyda shared the story of her Grandma Tillie Duncan, a young widow with seven children and pregnant with number eight when her husband died of a heart attack. Truly a pioneer! What strength and fortitude to raise that family on that beautiful ranch at 8,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies. We listened to some great stories. All of us have them if we will just take the time to look around. And of course, still my favorite part of FHE, a great treat! Sister Welch had made cinnamon rolls, oh, they were good. I had three! I won’t be coming home slender. Still fat and sassy.
Tuesday and Wednesday mornings Clyda and Sister Manatad cut more Kangaroo Tubes. I spent time at the office. Tuesday of course was the 4th of July! We invited the Heaths and Sister Garner over for Taco Tuesday to celebrate. It was a fun evening eating and visiting. We are truly blessed to be able to associate with great people. Clyda treated Sister Manatad to lunch each day and to ice cream at 7-11 after they finished on Wednesday to celebrate. You can get the soft swirl vanilla chocolate cone like at Little America for 30 pesos, 54 cents! A good deal.
On Wednesday we met with Brother Colipapa at the templex at 4:00. After that we walked on down Gorordo to Sr. Pedro’s to pick up a rotisserie chicken for dinner. They were closed, oh the disappointment. Well, on the way home we tried a different place, Chooks to Go. It was even better than the ones we have gotten at Sr. Pedro’s. What a find. A lot closer to our apartment. We always have chicken and some kind of veggies for dinner. Then Clyda uses the rest of the chicken to make a vegetable and chicken stew that last 2-3 meals. It is delicious.
Thursday was another office day completing our financial report, SUCCESSFULLY! Eight entries. We need to celebrate. Two times in a row now without getting red flagged or in big blue letters, NON-COMPLIANT!
We got our Sibunag Fire Station presentation ready for Monday. We are asking for a motorcycle and a chainsaw so they can respond to a lot of people who live on trails in the hills where a truck can’t go. After a storm, there might be limbs in the way, so they want a chainsaw, also. Basically, the Fire Station is the EMS and Search and Rescue for anything off the highway. We are of course providing them with first aid supplies, an aircon, and bunk beds. I thought we were going to present it last week, but we didn’t get all the quotes back from purchasing in time. We have them now. We will see how this goes.
We also had a wonderful 3:00 session at the temple. It is a beautiful temple. We really enjoy our time there. With the outside looking almost like the rendition of the Montpelier Temple and almost the same square footage, it will be fun to see what the Montpelier Temple will look like inside and out.
On Friday we had our 7:30 a.m. WSRC meeting. It went well. That morning we got our DOD for Garcia Hernandez Child Development Centers approved and signed by the legal department. Oh happy day! Later in the day we met with Elder Dumas, the area seventy over the Cebu and Cebu East Missions. He is due to have his coordinating council meetings with all of the stake presidents in those two missions. We visited about finding a stake that would be a pilot program for food storage. In this heat and humidity, it is a different ball game than what we do back home. Do any of you have family or friends in Florida that store food? Would they be willing to share with us the best practices? Family food storage is basically non-existent here. When disaster hits, they are very reliant on receiving help from the government or the church. We need to teach them to be personally prepared with at least enough for a couple of months. One of the main reasons here for home food storage would be to help them buy items at low prices and store them to use when those items are quite expensive. We feel that vacuum packing will be the best way to go. Rice will stay good for a year here in vacuum packs. A lot of Filipinos use sardines in their cooking. At certain times of year you can get them very cheap. However, a big share of the time they are five times as expensive than at the cheap times. So, acquiring quite a bit at the cheap times, drying them, and then vacuum packing them could be a big savings. That is just one example. There are other items they like to use in their cooking that also have the cheap and expensive seasons.
After our visit with Elder Dumas, we walked down to Ayala Mall. It is a little over a mile. When we got to the mall, we sure enjoyed the air conditioning. We were going to celebrate our successful week by going to our first movie in the Philippines, “The Little Mermaid.” Well, like most of my life, too late. It is gone. Oh well, I saved $8.00, four bucks a piece. We got a taxi home.
On Saturday we caught a cab to the port, and a ferry to Tagbilaran, Bohol. Once there, Brother Bill Smalley picked us up at the port. He is a 76-year-old American, a good member of the church, married to a neat Filipino lady. He took us to our Garcia Hernandez Turnover. We picked up a couple of other ladies on the way. We stopped at his home. A beautiful home with a large yard. He has built the home himself. He is very handy with wood as you will see in the pictures, beautiful cabinets, stairs, tables, etc. We had a few minutes to kill, and he lives close to the highway. He fed us some cake and off we went to the turnover. It was a great affair. A lot of dancing, loud music, loud voices on mikes amped up way to high. Very gracious people. All thirty of the Child Center workers were there. All the development toys were set out. They all had their totes for the toys, their commitment to keep the toys safe. It was a good time and a chance to bare testimony of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. It is wonderful to be in a country that believes in Jesus Christ, and you can speak openly of him and teach them things about him that they do not know. Notice in one of the pictures when we are all pointing up. That is a sign that means, “We give the Lord thanks for the blessings we received.” They feel like us helping them is a blessing from the Lord. Pretty cool!
Hustle back to the port to catch the 4:20 ferry back to Cebu. Board the ferry with a group of youth from the U.S. just finishing their sight-seeing. Now they will start on a child nutrition center at another school here in Cebu this week. This is the start of the fourth center to be built by Rise and Rebuild and the youth groups that are coming over to help them. Pretty cool. We got to visit with some of them. The two leaders with this group both served missions here. The young man served in the Bacolod Mission from 2017-2019. The young lady served here in the Cebu Mission from 2019-2020. Two days after she returned home the pandemic hit. She will be here helping for six weeks with young people, then her family is coming, and they will spend two weeks touring this mission that she served in.
We were starved when we got home. Thanks for left over stew in the refrigerator. It was wonderful. A great day at church today, and then after church we took all of the cut-out material for the Kangaroo Tubes down to the church where the stake relief society was having their monthly meeting. We gave them all of the boxes. They said they would have them all sewn up and returned to the meeting on the second Sunday in August. We will pray for their success and a fun turnover at the hospital towards the end of August.
We are grateful for Connor’s faithful service in Chile. We love reading his weekly letters. We loved hearing about Mylie’s great FSY experience this past week. Our Savior loves us and is giving us every opportunity to learn more about him and return to him. It was fun to listen to the testimonies of Tessa and Taffy of the Holy Ghost bearing witness to them that FSY is an inspired program to help our youth Come Unto Christ. Thanks for sharing with us. We also had a great visit with Olivia. She shared with us the great experience she had as a guest speaker at Geneva’s Girls Camp. Thanks for sharing with us Olivia. I’m grateful our children and grandchildren are having these experiences where the Holy Ghost testifies of truth. I’m grateful for Ministering Angels that are helping us. We are so blessed. Our Heavenly Father truly loves us, and we love you!
With love,
Dad and Mom
Grandpa and Grandma
Briant and Clyda
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